Archive for May, 2014

Eleven drawings of eleven teams from every World Cup between 1970 and 2010. Over the next couple of months, we will see a lot of pictures and clips of the Brazils, Argentinas, Germanys, Italys; great teams from the history of the World Cup. What we will likely see less of is teams that were alright, pretty good, or a bit rubbish. These eleven drawings are of those teams.

Peru, 1970. Came second in their group, lost 4-2 in the quarters to eventual champions Brazil.

Scotland, 1974. Failed to get out of their group, despite have the same wins, draws, and losses as Yugoslavia and Brazil, who both progressed on goal difference.

Mexico, 1978. Lost all three of their group games.

England, 1982. Won all three of their group games, and drew both of their second round group games, thus failing to progress due to West Germany beating Spain in the other game.

Denmark, 1986. Great kit. Won all their group games, then battered 5-1 by Spain in the Round of 16.

Cameroon, 1990. Topped their group, beat Colombia in the Round of 16, and narrowly lost to England in the quarter finals, losing 3-2 after extra time.

Colombia, 1994. Lost all two of their group games. Tragically, Andrés Escobar scored an own goal in their 2-1 defeat by the USA, and was murdered back in Colombia two weeks later.

Romania, 1998. Won their group, lost 1-0 to Croatia in their Round of 16 game.

Nigeria, 2002. Winless in their group, losing to Argentina and Sweden, and drawing with England.

Trinidad and Tobago, 2006. The smallest nation to ever qualify for the World Cup, Trinidad and Tobago came bottom of their group, losing to England and Paraguay after a scoreless draw against Sweden.

I’ve been saving this blog post. I wrote it today. But I’ve been saving writing it. I had this idea, you see, to write a blog post, but really late. And see how much I could write about something I did without it being fresh in my mind. It was something I thought about doing maybe a couple of months after the event, but it’s been over two years. I went to Africam Safari on the 29th day of April, 2012. I went there with an ex-girlfriend, but that’s incidental. I’m not going to mention her by name or anything, but I might use the first person plural. Just so you know, really, that I’m not using the royal we. (Here, though, I would like to plant an image in your head: Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles playing bowling on the Wii.) So, yes, it’s an experiment. I’ve inserted photographs, but I didn’t look at them before writing, cos that’d kinda defeat the object of trying to remember stuff, so I looked at them and picked a few and inserted them after doing the whole type-y typing thing.

Africam Safari is, as the name telegraphs, a safari park. It also hints at the presence of African animals, doesn’t it? But, and this is the one part of the blog that I had written down in the Notes app on my iPod as a reminder to blog about it: Africam Safari is the worst place in the world.

Now, of course, that’s not strictly true. Although, “worst” is a subjective word, just as “best” is when saying “Justin Bieber is the best thing ever.” And while we were at the Africam Safari, I wrote in the Notes app on my iPod, “Africam Safari is the worst place in the world.”

We’d gone to Puebla for the weekend. Puebla is a town not too far from Mexico City. It’s quite nice. I’ve been several times. That trip was based around my desire to see my favourite Mexican baseball team, Diablos Rojos, playing against the Puebla team, the Pericos. We saw two games. And on our third and final day in the city, decided to get a bus to Africam Safari, which is about 15 km southeast of the city.

I don’t remember a huge amount about the journey. Just that there was a VW Golf on the side of the road covered in hats. I remember that because I took a photo of it. And that the pedestrian crossing near the entrance to Africam Safari was done like a yellow-on-black zebra pattern.

There was a greenhouse thingy with lizards, spiders, and butterflies, but the main thing was that you could drive around and see the animals up close. Lots of people were doing that in their cars, but we took the small bus. We sat at the back, looking through the dirty windows at magnificent, bored animals. It was hot and dusty in there. There were patterns, like logos and stuff, on the windows. What is the point of that? I have a problem with buses having decals on windows anyway. Nobody takes a bus because it’s their first choice. People take buses out of financial necessity for the most part. Why make that journey crappy by making their eyes go funny when are looking at things outside but they’ve got a dotty pattern that they have to look through and inadvertently keep focussing on? It seems even more stupid when the entire point of the bus, (that is, the bus at Africam Safari) is to allow punters to see things that are outside.

We moved slowly around the snaking roads. Passing zebras, parrots, gazelles, rhinos, elephants, ostriches (or maybe they were emus, I can’t remember), boars, and those cows with the really point horns that look like ice cream cones. It was like being in a traffic jam. Just with extra tigers.

Halfway around, we were instructed to get out. The tour guide fella dressed it up as a drink/snack/toilet break, but really it was just so that we’d spend some time and money in the souvenir shop. A souvenir shop that had some dodgy dolls that, in a safari park in Mexico, could quite easily be taken as a bit racist. We bought ice creams.

Even though I know in my heart that zoos are kinda wrong, I still enjoy being at zoos. But not Africam Safari. That place was shit. I was in a right grumpy mood by the time we left.

I can’t remember much more than that, really. Which is disappointing. As you were.

On 28th February, at about four o’clock in the morning, I got home from an evening of boozing. Boozing on my own. I’d been a bit stressed with work, and kinda needed to totally forget about the fact that the long day I’d just had would be followed by another long stress-y day. In bed, I typed the following into the notes app on my iPod. Sufficient time has elapsed now, and I don’t really feel as embarrassed by it as I did back then. And it’s interesting (for me) to have a document that clearly reminds me of what I am like when I’m in a thinky mood and full of booze. So here you go. The footnotes were written today.

After an amount of whisky, six-ish beers, and some, not quite sure how many, mezcales, I was walking home (not really in a straight line), and I heard these words come out of my mouth: “I want to be drunk forever.” And I kinda really meant it.* Then I, regrettably, bought a cigarette from some dude on the street.† Then I saw a man walking his dogs and really wanted to stop, say hello, stroke his dogs, cos dogs are ace. But I didn’t, cos I knew I was drunk. Then I went for tacos (sorry, pigs‡) and drank more beer. (Bob fucking Marley playing on the telly in the taqueria, and they had a power cut while I was there, too. That was fun. More fun than “don’t worry about a thing cos every little thing gonna be alright.”) Then I listened to songs that I really like on my iPod (Some Kind of Bliss by Kylie Minogue, Municipality by Real Estate, a bunch of Richard Hawley stuff). Then I felt bad about life. Then I got back to my shitty hotel room.§ Then I felt my balls to make sure I don’t have cancer. Then I posted–that is, now am posting–this on Facebook, for some reason.¶ Love you stroke damn you Zuckerberg for making this the place where one feels in touch with one’s friends. Then I realised that being a random drunk person isn’t the same as being Dylan Thomas. Then I got into bed. Buenas noches. Then I thought, aah, it’s still funny that Man U are so shit this season.# Then I woke up the next morning and deleted this post.** Enjoy, fuckers.

* It’s a nice drunkness to be, I think, when it just feels like you are totally normal in your head.
† I’d given up smoking in late November 2013. It was all going well. Then I had one when I was drinking. And the next few times I went out, I’d have just one. And those just ones became more than just one. I’m back smoking again now, frustratingly, cos I’d got through two months and it felt good.
‡ I stopped eating meat last September.
§ During February and March, I lived in a hotel while my girlfriend and I were looking for a flat.
¶ I did actually do that on my Facebook page. I have two: a private one and a Flip Flop Flying one. If by any chance you feel the desire to add me as a friend on my private page, don’t be offended when I don’t add you back: it’s the only place on the Internet where I keep things that I just want my friends and not the general public to know.
# Still funny.
** I did exactly that.

Across the street is a supermarket. Handy. Very handy. Forgot to buy butter? No need to even bother putting shoes and socks on: I nip over in my flip flops. The supermarket is a Mexican supermarket called Superama. It’s now owned by Walmart which does smart a bit every time I go in there. Anyway, the other morning, I was stood on the balcony, glazed eyes just staring out over the top of the supermarket at the sky. Evntually, I focussed on the illuminated Superama sign. And then I got to thinking about Bananarama. And David Gedge’s other band, Cinerama. And then I started thinking of as many words as I could that ended in -orama: diorama, panorama… That’s all I could come up with, to be honest.

But it did get me wanting to find out about the origin of the -rama ending. A wee google and I was on the Wiktionary page for panorama. Apparently the word is from ancient Greek: pan (“all”) and horama (“that which is seen”).

So I guess Superama means “the stuff you see in our shop is super.” And Bananarama means “look at all the fucking narners.”

Anyway, here’s a photograph of the supermarket. It’s the view from my balcony. It was taken about a month ago. All of the stalls and people on the street are due to fact that next to the supermarket is a football stadium, Estadio Azul, home of Cruz Azul which, handily, is my favourite Mexican team. You can see the stadium, it’s the blue and white thing. Beyond that, you can see the upper parts (the red bits) of the bullfighting place, which is the largest bullfighting place in the world.

A 43 year old British man was found dead in his apartment in Mexico City today. It is believed he laughed himself to death after arranging a Pink Panther toy to look like he was cradling a big pink cock with his arms.